Solar Power?

[dmlfarmer]

Costs of solar falling rapidly. Announcement from this summer "NV Energy, a Berkshire Hathaway-owned utility company, has signed a PPA to purchase electricity from the 100 MW Playa Solar 2 power plant at a stunningly low price of $0.0387/kWh!" (http://cleantechnica.com/2015/07/10/price-solar-hits-record-low/) Some of the comments on here remind me of my grandfather telling me how some neighbors said tractors would never replace horses. Same short sightedness.

[greybeard]

Canada produce's 55% of our electrical generation capacity from hydro.
US produces 7% of theirs.
27% of ours comes from fossil fuel.
That puts us at #187 on the list of countries in the world.
The counties below us are mostly all hydro or nuke.
We export 10% of what we produce.
US has a 31% import tax on Chinese panels.
Even in the most favorable locations large scale solar only produces 1/2 capacity in Dec/Jan.
Lots of proposed hydro within 200 miles of me.
Puts local boys to work.
Guess where all the solar subsidies will go?

[LEP]

Dmlfarmer, if we can get solar at that price sign me up. But my experience has been Ontario at 80 cents per kW.

Also anything I have read is that solar at current prices takes 30 years to break even.

That said we should all conserve until it hurts. I bought LED bulbs for the entire house and am putting them in my shop. Bulbs for the house were $1400. Not sure what the payback is on this but it is something.

I agree GF people should recycle everything possible. I always enjoy making something from nothing. Our local dump doesn't allow scavenging. Ridiculous in my opinion. I don't have time to do it but several in our community used to and I thought go for it.

[Hamloc]

Grassfarmer I have 4 heated waterers which consume a total of 2000 watts of electricity. We are not blessed with high producing water wells, so I have 2 wells which pump into a 1200 gallon cistern in a small insulated building which uses a thermostatically controlled 1500 watt baseboard heater to keep from freezing. Then it is pumped from there to the waterers. The point I was trying to make was I was amazed at the cost to build a solar system to run 4 waterers. I think it is very obvious what the new carbon taxes the government is planning to impose on us will be spent on,subsidizing solar and wind power to make them look affordable. Dml I hope you are right but the sun still doesn't shine 24 hrs a day where I live and my brother in law has been an electrician for over 30 years so is very knowledgeable and has no reason to give me incorrect pricing on solar panels.

[LEP]

Dmlfarmer when I went to your link and looked around it still looks like solar has a ways to go before it is anywhere close to viable.

I agree we should implement all viable renewable options, but the reality is if power rates go to .25 or .30 kw there won't be anything but half empty houses in Canada.

Manufacturing in Ontario currently pays .05 and can barely make a go of it.

[LEP]

Just thought of another thing, even small scale diesel generation is far cheaper than solar. I think it comes in at .14 to .15 /kw.

Wouldn't that be good for the environment to have 15or 20,000 of those in a city the size of Saskatoon or Regina.

[oneoff]

Just sa another example of a solar system not capable of producing much power.

Apparently when there is hoar frost; or even a light dusting of snow; solar panels can be almost totally covered by a layer that probably affects their output significantly.

At least thats what it looked like today; on the roof of a home almost completely covered by a solar array.

[oneoff]

Now for a suggestion that would produce some real power; using energy sources vented directly to the atmosphere and/or burned obscenely though oil site flare stacks.

I am told that there still remains the first individual or company to sign up for less than 100 KVA generating capacity under SaskPower programs that pay 10.2 cents per kilowatt hour generated into the grid.

As an example; the meager amount of about 5 cubic feet per minute of raw gas will generate in the order of 25 kilowatt hours of electricity......

and also produce about the same amount of waste heat energy blown out of the radiator

And
Another 25 KWH all ready to extract somehow from the exhaust gas stream.

Now think green house heating; or enough heat to warm thousands of square feet of enclosed....but even largely uninsulated building are.

Now I'll bet bucket can grasp this situation; but not so sure about the rest who might even dare read this heresy

Call me a Bitcher if you want; it might well be taken as a compliment.